Mostly Links – 6 May 2011

Citizen Kane is 70 years old this week. I could collect a series of interesting links to commemorate the fact, or I could just link to the handy example that MUBI made earlier. Go on, have an argument in the comments about whether Kane really is the greatest film of all time.

I’ve just sat here for half an hour trying to work an elegant and/or amusing transition from talking about Citizen Kane to talking about this week’s UK new releases. Let’s just pretend that what I came up with was both elegant and amusing.

After yesterday’s post, I’m certainly keen to break my Miike duck with 13 Assassins. Other than that, most of this week’s crop look to me like potential guilty pleasures (Yeah, I mean Priest, what of it?) and potential guilty not even pleasures like Hanna. Rachid Bouchareb’s foreign-language Oscar nominee, the Algerian war epic Outside the Law, probably looks to me like the most interesting non Samurai new release.

But the one film I’m probably most excited about this weekend is Jerzy Skolimowski’s long-lost cult classic Deep End, restored and reissued by the BFI, in advance of the upcoming DVD and BluRay reissue. Ryan Gilbey writes about its tortured history for the Guardian here. Skolimowski’s Essential Killing was one of the most vivid new films I’ve seen this year, and with Deep End’s reputation, I can’t wait to see it. Even if it doesn’t have a bit where Vincent Gallo forces a woman at gunpoint to breastfeed him, and then steals her bike.

In America, the summer blockbuster season kicks off with Thor, and it looks like everything else is keeping out of its way. The films sent up against it have the distinctly minty air of sacrificial lambs. Something Borrowed is, what, the fifth Kate Hudson romcom of the year already? Oh but hang on, does it count as a Kate Hudson romcom if she plays the evil bitch/frenemy? Tricky question (Something Borrowed is also opening here, and in another sign of the confidence the studio has in it, it didn’t screen for critics). What else? Last Night has been sitting on the shelf since Sam Worthington had the use of his legs. Hobo With a Shotgun is, I’m sure, in no way an overextended one-joke curio. Passion Play is currently being disowned on a weekly basis by Mickey Rourke. That’s Mickey Rourke (I love the top comment on that YouTube vid: “jeez…..i swear every movie megan fox has ever been in besides transformers sucks total ass…” – er, yeah; besides Transformers).

In other stuff:

Matt Zoller Seitz on the best car chases ever. (Damn right, I still stick Ronin in the DVD player every so often)

In advance of our first coverage of video games on Mostly Film, coming next week, a handy round up of jihadist games.

An early recording of Vin Diesel rapping, courtesy of Glenn Kenny (go on, you know you want to).

Film makers and stars talk about their youthful summer movie memories in the not-very-paywalled New York Times.

And finally, because I know at least one person (okay, one) who is so excited about the prospect of seeing it that he’s going to France in a couple of weeks when it opens there, as it turns out it didn’t open here this weekend after all (and nobody knows when it will), the first actual clip from Terence Malick’s Tree of Life.

Back next week with blog posts covering hip-hop, video games, reality TV and (somewhat less than mostly) film.